JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about the statement—President Obama is now under fire from the right for not speaking out more forcefully on behalf of the Iranian protesters. He responded to this charge in an interview on CBS News Friday.

       PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do. That’s what we’re already seeing. We shouldn’t be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the Iranian people are seeking to let their voices be heard. What we can do is bear witness and say to the world that the incredible demonstrations that we’ve seen is a testimony to, I think, what Dr. King called the “arc of the moral universe.” It’s long, but it bends towards justice.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was President Obama on Sunday. Kouross Esmaeli, Iranian American journalist and filmmaker, your response to the criticism of President Obama from the right, in terms of his inaction on the issue of the election in Iran?

KOUROSS ESMAELI: What is interesting about the criticisms that are coming from the right is that it’s been coming primarily from Senator John McCain. The Iranians know Senator John McCain as the man who sang “Bomb, bomb Iran” during the elections of last year. The man holds no credibility as far as supporting Iranians or seeming like he’s got the best interests of the Iranians at heart. And that, for Iranians and for this issue, that discredits him altogether and discredits this whole attack on President Obama.

President Obama’s stand, I think, has been the most sensible, and it’s amazing that the President of the United States is taking such a sensible stand. And that—everyone I’ve talked to in Iran has said the same thing, that we do not need any symbol of Western, especially American, interference in Iran’s internal politics. And the fact that America does not have diplomatic relations with Iran really ties its hand, as far as how far he can go in really supporting Iran. So the only thing they can do is to just scream as loud as they can, which will be immediately used by the Iranian authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: Kouross Esmaeli, give us a brief history lesson. Talk about why especially the sensitivity to the United States interfering with Iran.

KOUROSS ESMAELI: The Western presence in Iran has been there for about 200 years, from the British and the Russian, who took parts of Iran under control up to World War II. And after World War II, it was the US that stepped in and started supporting the Shah of Iran as their favorite dictator in the Middle East. There was a coup d’état against a popularly elected prime minister that had come in to nationalize Iranian oil. And that has really remained within the Iranian consciousness ever since, ever since 1953, and Iranians harbor deep mistrust for the US, that was seen as orchestrating a coup against their popularly elected leadership. And in 1979, when the Islamic Revolution took place, the biggest sort of fear of the Iranian people was a repeat of the coup d’état. And that’s why the—that’s a large reason why the hostage crisis took place. They took hostages to make sure that the US does not come in, invade, orchestrate another coup again. And that has remained the dynamic within the Iran-US relations: mistrust on both sides.

And at this point that the US does not have diplomatic relations, it really makes no sense for any administration to get political points for seeming like they’re standing up with some demonstrators somewhere in order to score points with their constituents here. Over the weekend—and what’s amazing is the way the media in the US has been really helping spin this for the Republican right wing. I mean, there were images on CNN and Fox over the weekend of President Obama, I think, buying ice cream for his daughters while the demonstrators in Iran were fighting for their democracy. And they were likening that to President Bush when he was playing golf right after he invaded Iraq and equating the two. It was like, how heartless could Obama be, when he could be—I don’t know what he could be doing in order to support Iranians. I think he did the best thing he could do in order to support the Iranians.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in terms of the Iranian Revolution, one of the key figures in the early days of that revolution was Rafsanjani, and now the current government has detained some of his relatives. Can you talk about his role right now in Iran and in the crisis?

KOUROSS ESMAELI: Rafsanjani has held many positions inside Iran. Today, he holds—he’s the leader of two very important councils: the councils that oversee the relationship between the Parliament and the President and the council that oversees the election of the next Supreme Leader. So he holds very, very important positions. And he openly supported Mir Hossein Mousavi in these previous elections.

His family was arrested yesterday, and they were all—they were freed. They were all freed. And at this point, it seems like, in some of the reports in the Western media, that there’s going to be an open rift in which the different leaders inside the country are going to start killing each other or jailing each other—has really not happened. They’ve been able to voice their dissatisfaction with each other. Rafsanjani has been lobbying in Qom, in the holy city of Qom, where the majority of the clerics live. And he’s—and there’s back channels going on that we don’t really know about. But as far as we know right now is that there are disagreements. They’re more and more coming to the fore. They’re being reflected on Iranian television.

And disagreements—and the leaders of these—to disagreements can be said to be the Supreme Leader on one side, who supports Ahmadinejad, who supports the elections as they stand, and Rafsanjani, who supports Mousavi, who’s seen by many Iranians as being behind Mousavi, but at the same time as being the most powerful—the richest man in Iran. There’s a lot of resentment towards Rafsanjani at some point. And one of the ways that President Ahmadinejad was—used—got reelected, purportedly, is that he used some of the sentiment against Rafsanjani, some of the popular sentiment against Rafsanjani as the richest, most corrupt man in Iran, to get votes.

AMY GOODMAN: Now let’s talk a little about Mousavi, the opposition leader, who he was. He was already the leader of Iran. Talk about his significance at that time, what he represents, if he would represent something different. And, of course, that’s different after the protests than if he was just elected straight out.

KOUROSS ESMAELI: Sure. Hossein Mousavi was the prime minister of Iran during the very important periods of the Iran-Iraq War. And he was seen by many to have led internally the country in a way that he protected people’s interests at a time of war. And he’s very popular for that reason. He instituted all forms of social service networks. The welfare state, in many ways, that Iran has today, he’s credited for it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And it was a war during which the American administration at the time backed Iraq.

KOUROSS ESMAELI: Absolutely. It was a popular war. Iranians thought it was a war that people supported inside Iran, that was seen as “we are fighting against imperialism that wants to overthrow our regime.” And Mir Hossein Mousavi was the head of the state at that time.

He went out of politics after the end of the war. After ’89, he stepped out, and he continued to be heads of various organizations inside Iran. He’s an artist. He’s an architect. And he still carried out his personal life, until this year. He had been talked about running in the previous couple of elections, but he never did. And he was tapped to run again, and many think that it was Rafsanjani who tapped him, understanding that he’s popular, that because he’s been outside of Iranian politics, he’s unsullied by the past twenty years of corruption.

AMY GOODMAN: Although he was also repressive during his time.

KOUROSS ESMAELI: At the end of his term, when the war ended, there was a bout of killings, where as much as 5,000 dissidents, who had been in jail, were killed. And he was the prime minister when that happened, so he was responsible for that. And one of the questions that did come up in these elections, people did ask him formally that “Do you apologized for doing that?” So this, again, was aired, and this issue was aired and was talked about during the elections.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did he say?

KOUROSS ESMAELI: He didn’t answer the question, as far as I know. He did not come out and take a stand on that. He did—I mean, what distinguished him in these elections, I think, was very much his willingness to talk about various issues that other people did not want to talk about. The question of personal freedoms in the street, he talked about, you know, “If I’m elected president, I will do away with the morality police. I will do away with controlling people’s lives, and I will respect people’s private lives,” which is a very, very important grievance that people have towards the way the Islamic Republic is run right now. And his wife also was credited for talking about how, you know, she believes that women should have a choice whether they should veil or not. These are very important social issues that they took on, that there’s a wide layer of Iranians who would support something like that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And that particular point you mentioned, it’s been remarked quite often in these protests in the past few days, the high participation level of women in the protests.

KOUROSS ESMAELI: Mm-hmm.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Is that, in that sense, a reflection of Mousavi seen as a candidate that will provide more opportunities for women to participate in everyday life?

KOUROSS ESMAELI: Well, I think Mousavi’s stand on the question of women and personal freedoms is a reflection of how Iranian society has changed, the role that the women have been playing. The women were given a huge credit for the election of Khatami, of President Khatami, twelve years ago. So women have been participating more and more, and I think what the regime is realizing is that you cannot hold back this tide of—society has come to accept the public role of women and the women’s right to participate within any realm of society. And that brings up the issue of women’s personal choices, as well. So I think Mousavi rode that wave, rather than the other way around.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Kouross for being with us. Kouross Esmaeli is an Iranian American independent filmmaker and journalist, part of the Big Noise Film collective, has done a number of reports on Iran over the years. 

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/

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